A cascade interpretation of the Smith predictor and the arising enhanced scheme

In this paper we propose a novel interpretation of the well known Smith predictor scheme for dead-time plants. By a suitable change of coordinates, it is revealed that the system possesses a useful cascaded structure wherein extra stabilizing signals can be successfully injected to make the approach applicable to non Hurwitz plants. We emphasize here the potential of this type of "enhanced" Smith predictor scheme and suggest some preliminary ways to select the extra stabilizing signals, in addition to clarifying what are the key properties that these signals need to satisfy to induce desirable closed-loop performance